5 ways the Trump administration is implementing Project 2025
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- President Trump’s opponents sought to tie him to Project 2025, which he disavowed.
- During his first months in office, his policy agenda largely aligned with the conservative playbook.
Whether Project 2025 was President Trump’s plan for his second presidency was a big point of contention during the presidential campaign.
His opponents in the race — first President Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris — aggressively tried to tie him to the Heritage Foundation’s unpopular conservative playbook, which was unveiled in 2023. Trump vociferously denied it was his plan, and the White House still does.
Now, several months into Trump’s second term, what is clear is that he is working with incredible speed to implement an array of policies that align with those espoused by Project 2025’s conservative authors and contributors, some of whom Trump has appointed to prominent administration posts.
A tracking project claims Trump has already implemented more than 40% of Project 2025’s recommendations.
One prominent community tracking project claims President Trump has already implemented more than 40% of Project 2025’s recommendations.
Here are five areas where the alignment is evident:
Federal bureaucracy
In a Project 2025 chapter on the powers of the executive, Russell Vought — who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term — envisioned Trump moving quickly to “break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” by firing huge numbers of career federal employees, installing loyalists in positions of power and taking control of the federal purse strings from Congress.
Vought argued career federal employees with liberal leanings had taken too much power, and the next conservative president should seize that power back.
When Trump was elected, he appointed Vought to again head OMB, and Vought, along with the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, swiftly got to work attacking the federal bureaucracy.
Elon Musk has benefited from his close alliance with Donald Trump, as the president has ousted federal officials who had overseen departments investigating the billionaire’s multiple companies.
The OMB froze trillions of dollars in federal funding allocated by Congress. Vought prompted mass government layoffs by ordering federal agencies to “focus on the maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated.”
The courts are now hearing multiple challenges to firings, funding cuts and other Trump administration efforts to downsize the federal government.
Immigration
Trump appointed multiple immigration hard-liners with ties to Project 2025 to prominent roles in his administration, including Stephen Miller as his deputy chief of staff for policy and Tom Homan as his “border czar.” They have pushed various policies also espoused by the playbook.
Project 2025 said prioritizing “border security and immigration enforcement, including detention and deportation,” was crucial, called for many more detention beds to be created, and said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement should rescind policies that barred agents from staging immigration enforcement raids in “sensitive places” such as schools, hospitals and churches.
The Trump administration has ordered the biggest mass deportation program in U.S. history, called for billions to be invested in massive new immigration detention facilities, and promptly did away with ICE policies barring raids in sensitive places. It has also claimed sweeping executive powers to target immigrants in the country illegally, as Project 2025 recommended.
Congressional members warn that bottlenecked courts will be hurt as Trump administration fire immigration judges, demand that Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi explain
Transgender issues
Project 2025 proposed that all federal regulations that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity be rescinded, that transgender service members be ousted from the military and that gender-affirming care be strictly limited.
It also called for bans on federal funding for gender-affirming care and for “gender ideology” to be removed from all school curricula, suggested transgender athletes were endangering girls’ sports, and called for the total erasure of transgender identities in federal regulations, policies and materials.
Trump has begun implementing all of those policies. His administration announced plans to remove transgender service members, ordered the removal of LGBTQ+ references in agency materials, threatened local schools that allow transgender athletes to compete, threatened hospitals that provide gender-affirming care, and began clawing back federal funding from LGBTQ+ healthcare providers.
Trump made good on his threat to strip Maine of federal dollars over its rules regarding transgender athletes — rules essentially identical to those in California.
Trade
In his chapter on trade, economist Peter Navarro argued the U.S. must expand domestic manufacturing and called on the next president to take a particularly hard line on trade with China.
Promptly after being elected, Trump appointed Navarro as his senior counselor for trade and manufacturing. Within months, he announced sweeping new “reciprocal tariffs” against nations around the globe and even stiffer tariffs on China, suggesting those moves would return manufacturing jobs to the U.S.
The episode sent shock waves through the global economy and has produced rare examples of pushback against Trump’s agenda from Republicans in Congress.
As Trump’s aggressive tariffs rattle business owners and shake the foundation of American importing, the men and women who work on the ground at the country’s busiest port are feeling the effects too.
Education
Project 2025 called for dismantling the Department of Education.
The Trump administration has ordered massive layoffs there, which Education Secretary Linda McMahon called the “first step” toward eliminating the agency. It has also sought to rescind hundreds of millions of dollars in education funding and ordered schools nationwide to end “diversity, equity and inclusion,” or DEI, initiatives and support for transgender students.
Project 2025 also called for ending federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, accusing both the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio — and even “Sesame Street” — of harboring anti-conservative bias and having little educational value. Trump signed an executive order to cut the funding.
As Trump begins dismantling the Education Department, student loan services, civil rights enforcement and funding for disadvantaged students remain in limbo.
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